Dear readers,
Welcome to the 2026 Spring Semester at Moravian. After experiencing this armageddon of a snowstorm and negative temperatures at the beginning of classes, I’m sure we’re all exhausted already.
But as a journalist, I need to bring up a few things that happened over break. ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has expanded its employment rates, bonuses and raids. I personally am appalled by how this administration has weaponized and normalized state violence, especially in response to non-violent crimes.
I’m sure you have heard the news, but if you somehow haven’t, ICE Officer Jonathan Ross shot U.S. Citizen Renee Good three times in the head in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026, where there has been an increased ICE presence since the beginning of the year. Good, practicing her right of protest, was essentially killed for blocking a roadway. If you watch the footage over, in my opinion, Ross was in no danger, as her wheels pointed away from him.
If there were a community member near me about to get abducted by ICE, I would do the same thing as Good and use my freedom of protest to protect this member of my community. That could have been anybody – including me, and those I love – in that situation. And I am revolted. The ease with which this violence occurred should terrify us.
No one is illegal on stolen land; a reminder that immigration enforcement in this country has always existed atop displacement, colonization, and selective definitions of belonging. J.D. Vance is saying that Good deserved to die; her death is a “tragedy of her own making,” and that is not the type of leadership I want representing this country now, or in the future. There should not be growing comfort among elected officials in excusing lethal force against dissent.
ICE officers should not be immune. ICE Officer David Courvelle pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman who was detained in exchange for allowing her to contact her son. This is one of the men tasked with “protecting our country.”
I simply cannot understand how these officers are even being considered for immunity when they faced absolutely no danger except a cellphone recording their actions, which they should be ashamed of, reprimanded and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Children as young as five years old are being abducted by ICE in unmarked vehicles, and one school district has lost four students in the last few weeks from ICE raids. Oh yeah, ICE is also legally allowed to lie to you and told one of those students that they were taking the child to school, only to bring them to a detention center.
And then on Jan. 24, an unidentified border patrol/ICE agent murdered 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti in cold blood in broad daylight for having his phone out and recording the officers after they attacked a woman with pepper spray, and later, Pretti checked on that woman to make sure she was okay.
After Pretti checked on her, ICE agents tackled Pretti to the ground, removed his gun, which he had a permit to legally carry, from his waistband / belt / holster (which means he never pulled it to threaten the officers.)
This is not justice. This is state violence without accountability, normalized through political rhetoric, and led by our President Donald Trump himself.
This is our government growing comfortable with killing people for dissent, without documentation, for being in the way of whatever their political goal is.
This is not the United States of America I pledged allegiance to every single day as a child in public school. This is not what I stand for. I stand for my documented and undocumented friends, and I pray every day that this country will grow kinder and more compassionate.
